The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Thursday approved construction of the first new nuclear reactors to be built in the United States since 1978. The commission’s board approved the decision by a 4-1 vote, with its chairman Gregory B. Jaczko casting the dissenting vote.

The new reactors will be added to the Vogtle plant outside of Waynesboro, Ga., and operated by Southern Co. The reactors will use light water technology developed by Westinghouse. The new reactors could be in full operation by 2016, according to Southern. The reactors will together generate 2,200 MW, enough to power almost 1.8 million homes.

"These new reactors will employ cutting-edge technology that requires fewer components than our current nuclear fleet, thereby increasing safety by providing fewer opportunities for things to go wrong during an emergency,” he said in a public statement.

The plan to expand the plant has faced opposition from Congressman Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and environmental groups including Friends of the Earth, which questioned the safety of the reactor design in the wake of the damage caused to nuclear power plants in Fukushima, Japan, by an earthquake last year.

“Today, the NRC abdicated its duty to protect public health and safety just to make construction faster and cheaper for the nuclear industry,” Markey said in a statement.

The Department of Energy is expected to provide $8.3 billion in conditional loan guarantees for the construction of the reactors.

The last reactor granted approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission came shortly before the Three Mile Island nuclear incident in 1979.

It will be Westinghouse's AP1000 pressure-water reactors, untested in the real world anywhere. The local community of Waynesboro, Georgia is very excited about the new construction, because it creates jobs for the community and double the tax revenue. (It's the same anywhere in the world, how these things are sold.)

Here's a USA Today article from March 18, 2011, after Reactors 1, 3, 4, 2 had explosive events at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. The comment from the mayor of Waynesboro can be from any mayors around any nuclear power plant in Japan - in the plant operator we trust, the giver of shining new town halls, schools, recreation centers:

A nuclear plant disaster in Japan has done little to change the thinking about nuclear energy in Waynesboro, Ga., where the USA's first nuclear power plant construction in decades is planned.

Mayor George DeLoach, 70, says people in Waynesboro trust Southern Co., which is expanding its Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant from two nuclear reactors to four.

"We have a lot of confidence in the Southern Co.," says DeLoach, who is in his 16th year as mayor. "The plant is over 20 years old. It's been operating since the late '80s and we haven't had a serious accident or complaint out there. They do a great job."

.....

Plant Vogtle is a source of considerable largesse in Waynesboro, which bills itself as the Bird Dog Capital of the World for the Georgia Field Trials held there since 1901. Vogtle is the county's largest employer and generates about $25 million annually in utilities taxes — 70% of the local tax base. That is expected to double to between $50 million and $60 million with the new reactors, which will generate 3,000 construction jobs and 800 to 900 new permanent positions, the mayor says.

"We have five new schools, a new hospital, a new library and one of the best rural emergency management systems in the state," he says. "The nuclear plant in Japan was built in 1971. That's 40 years. We've had a lot of new technology that's come out since that plant was built in Japan."

The last bit sounds just like Japanese. Oh we have new technology now, we're not Japan.

That's what the Japanese have said all along. We have new technology now, we're not America (referring to TMI), we're not Russia (Chernobyl). In fact, they still say that regarding the state-of-the-art decontamination technologies of bags and screw drivers.

I'm sure Chinese and Indians are saying it too. We have new technology now, we're not Japan, the US, or Russia.

15
comments:

Atomfritz
said...

Let's see what the outcome will be.

What will the test tube babies of Waynesboro say when the "AP 1000 chimney effect" intensively irradiates them with radioactive stuff?

Read this article for an explanation:http://fairewinds.com/AP1000-Containment-Leakage-Report-Fairewinds-Associates-Inc(see the picture links at the end of the long article for a short graphical explanation!)

In short, these AP-1000 are way more dangerous than every old Mark-I nuke plant like at Fukushima.I am really happy I live far away from Vogtle.

This is such a slow motion train wreck. All the concerns and new knowledge from Fukushima are being totally ignored with the Vogtle approval. They have not done any sort of re-review. The NRC is not a safety agency they are a danger to the health and safety of the country. They need to be investigated and disbanded for utter failure of their mission as a govt agency.

The part of the technology that is new has some very risky problems that are not resolved. The part of the design that is exactly like every old nuclear plant including Fukushima is not being changed either. They told the plant to voluntarily make retrofits as needed when they mandate them (if they ever do) on the old plants. These AP1000 have the exact same spent fuel issues as the Fuku units do. Bonus scary fact, they can run a full core of mox fuel in these huge reactors. Not only are they just as risky they are bigger and more dangerous if they fail.

Not to mention the new AP1000 reactors will be totally different and even more complex.Oh, and I'm sure the water will stay in the passive cooling system tank _on_top_ of the whole buidling in case of an emergency, well, unless it's a serious one, maybe.

'I guess this one (half way to core meltdown due to construction errors and complexity beyond human comprehension) doesn't count then.'

Half way to core meltdown? Not even close, not even in the ballpark, or even the same state. The reactor was coming on-line, nowhere near hot enough to start melting. If it was at 100% power, this event may have proved troublesome.

When the mayor says his 20-year-old plant is better than Fukushima's 40-year-old plant, and that the new, improved version is better yet, I'd point out that it is, nevertheless, the same technology.

Think of the amount of technological change we've seen in the last 40 years. Notice how little creative destruction has happened in energy production, as if the only fossilized remains containing more concrete than a NPP is the money and political power that supports it.

I wonder who makes that kind of steel containment anyway. Not many foundries are still in operation that can make them."

Company is in Hokkaido called Japan Steel Works Ltd. They are supplying nuke reactor vessels and other heavy steel forgings for nukes to everyone in world except Russian Federation which does own forging. It's big backlog of orders for one company!

Aholes! I live 20 miles from Atlanta Georgia. Not only do I get to pay for this thing. I get to be lied to. I get to pay for electricity after I paid to have it built. When something goes wrong I get to pay for that with my health. When something goes really wrong I get to pay for them to clean it up. Thank god for their limited liability. This industry needs to disappear

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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